Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Tableau and Football Dynasties


I have been working on two of the things that I like at once, football and spiffy graphics.

The above graph is made from Tableau, a free data visualization program. The data is my NFL Dynasty data (more about it here from last year). From the graph we see that the Colts, even though they lost the Super Bowl, are now the "biggest" team in the NFL beating out the plummeting Steelers.

Click around on the graphic it should have interactive filters.

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Unobtainium in 3D

I recently watched "Ferngully II; Dances with USB enabled 10 foot tall Smurfs" (Avatar). The movie was good, the story was very thin but I only had one "cringe worthy" moment: they are mining for something called "unobtainium ". Really guys, is that all you could come up with?

But that is not that is not what I want to talk about, my big thought coming from the movie is that "3D" technology is heading in the wrong direction. Sure Avatar is darn good use of the current technology but I don't think we aren’t going to be able to get very much further on the road that we are traveling.

To me the current "3D" movies seem instead as 2D with depth. The problem is that the movies are still be recorded with one focus point, that means that while the movie is going on there is only one thing that is in focus, and if I am not looking at that then everything is going to be blurry. Take this to contrast real life 3D, whatever I am looking at is in focus while everything else is blurry. The result of this type of 3D is that we get a superficially looking 3D movie but the viewers are still restrained to look at a specific spot and depth in the movie.

I think that this is a good first step, however, since we are about to get ESPN broadcast in this 3D technology it may take a while to move on to something that is better.

Oh well, for now we will just have to put up with those stylish glasses in the theatres... and soon at home.

Monday, January 04, 2010

I got it!

Let's just get past the obvious things, so I can get on with the other stuff.  Nicole and I are expecting our first baby in May, Christmas and New Year's was great and Caesar Salad dressing made with Egg Beaters takes the same as with raw eggs (so just use that instead).  Nicole does a much better job of keeping up with the events of our lives so check out her blog to see details.

For Christmas I got a set of metal puzzles. After I figured out the pattern of how they work I made pretty quick work of all but one of them. I sat and worked on it for a good 10 minutes before I decided to work on it some more, but from in front of the TV. I worked on it a good time more (maybe 30 or so more minutes... but to give me credit I was watching TV at the same time.) Anyways, I couldn't get it.

Nicole's mom asked to try, so I gave the puzzle to Nikki, my 3 year old niece to pass on over. I the time it took her to make it to Niocle's mom, she says "I got it!" and the two metal pieces are separated.

Grumble.

Let's see her try to figure out how to check for type I error rates in the way that we have implemented neural networks. She wouldn't get that one in 10 seconds.

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Say no to "Art".

Out of all the swindlers I believe that "artist" get off the easiest. I should clarify that I don't mean all artists, just those that tend to hide behind the phrase "you can't criticize my work because it is art". Those people -they have a racket going.

Take for instance this new "art":



It's a rotating kitchen. Neat? Yes. Somewhat of an experiment? Yes. Art? No.

I am getting tired of these "artists" who just do *something* and then claim it's art. That isn't art, that is just doing something new. I don't see why they get a pass as soon as they say "but it's art!". Hog. Wash.

Let's celebrate the people that actually have talent, not those that just get away with anything because they hide behind the term "art".

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

And He Said "Let there be couch"


So it was. And they sat. And it was good.


This weekend Nicole and I finally joined the 16th Century and got ourselves a couch. But this isn't just any old couch, it is a Jigsaw Puzzle Couch, and as you can see from the picture it is quite awesome.

Many thanks to Daily Piglet for her review of the couch over on her blog. (The review is actually how I found out about her blog.)

Now we just need to get a TV so that we have some reason to sit on this couch.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

State Song

When I was growing up my Grandpa has a tape of a song that had all the states in it. We listened to it alot and I even think some of the girls got some money if they memorized the song.

The song he had was very close to this one form the Animaniacs except this one is states and their capitols:

Monday, October 12, 2009

Amazing, and not in a good way.

Sometimes it is amazing to see what other countries are struggling with:

Friday, October 02, 2009

Alarm Will Sound

This morning I had a dream that I was in a store (like a pawn shop or something similar) and I was tired of being there so I decided that I wanted to leave. Right next to the counter was a side exit door that was propped open a few inches. When I got to the door to leave I noticed a sign on it that said "Don't Open Door - Alarm Will Sound". I kind of chuckled to myself because the sign was obviously wrong since the door was already open and there was no alarm going off. So I went through the door out into the sidewalk - and them my alarm went off, as in my 7:30am alarm to wake me up went off - just as I was walking through the door in my dream.

I am sure someone in my brain had that one all worked out and through it would be hilarious joke to play.

Why didn't I heed the sign?

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Parenting

I think this is the definition of a good parent:


Update: Good job MLB for taking that video down, I would use your official video of it (I even like the commentary better) but I can't embed it on my blog.

Update2: No thanks to MLB it is up again. I agree with alot of others around the nets that the MLB is hugely stupid in clamping down on this clip. They did a good job of turning a great clip into a black eye for themselves.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

The Internets Are Alive

With the sounds of awesome.

It seems that with increasing frequency there are neat things being made on the internet. One of the latest things to catch my eye is a site called animoto.com that takes images, videos, and a soundtrack and turns them automatically into a pretty good slide show.

Here is the one that I made as a promo for the two fantasy football leagues that I am running this year (my teams are the Tea Republic ones):



Not too bad, the only trick is that the timing of the images are preset so I had to edit the music some to fit the amount of images that I had. In the end I am happy with the video it made though.

In other news work is keeping me busy, so I haven't had the time lately to post. I am working on things though that should give me more stuff to post about, so stay tuned for that.

Friday, August 07, 2009

Soda one Soda all

Whenever I am on the road I only stop at gas stations, not because I don't like smelly rest stops (it's true though). It's because I like buying different drinks. No, really. If there is a gas station that I stop at and I don't go in to see if they have any crazy new drink I feel like I might have missed an opportunity to find my true love in the beverage world. (Surge was my soul mate until Coke killed it and replaced it with the impostor Vault... It's ok Vault I still like you, just not in THAT way.)

Anyways Coke has made a machine that is made of hopes and dreams:



Coke has placed a couple of these in the wild down in Atlanta, let's see what the natives think:



If there was one of these machines anywhere in Oklahoma I would make a pilgrimage to see it.

Peach Vault, you may still yet win my heart.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Awesome begot Awesome

Apparently Woot! had their 5th birthday yesterday, and to celebrate it a company called ChronoShark (random watch-a-day deal site) sent Woot a marching band and cupcakes:



How awesome is that?

Now the question is would the company that you work for do that, or get that from a rival? Probably not, you know why? Because companies have decided that they are in business to make money and not have fun. Woot on the other hand doesn't take things too seriously and has awesomely funny jokes and great deals. They enjoy making their money. People see that, they like it, and they treat Woot better for it.

Isn't that how we should work and live? I guess another word for it is karma, but I like the term "Awesome begot Awesome". We spend too much time just getting by and not trying to go above and beyond, we need to do that. And not to make quarterly profit totals or whatever cooperate BS companies have, we need to do it to make the world awesome. Woot does it, Chipotle does it, the business model works.

Monday, July 13, 2009

You say Hammer, I say...

Anybody who is anybody at my work uses a yellow legal pad when they take notes. So not to be one to miss out on a trend I too use yellow legal pads (actually, I think it is more of a case that in the office supplies we only have yellow legal pads, but whatever). But I don't like getting a new pad when I use up an old one, instead I like to find and use pads that someone else has started to use and then abandon it. And that is rather easy to do here since there are a couple of kids that come to work with their parents once in a awhile. Usually I can find a pad that has the first couple of pages drawn on and the rest of the pad ready for my more sophisticated notes (i.e. my Master's level doodles during meetings).

In one of the pads that I started to use I flipped through first first couple pages of drawings to find a building list: a Nail, then a picture of a nail, a Board, then a picture of a plank of wood, then:
That's right, a Wamer. I believe that wamer describes to function of the tool way more than hammer. I propose that we use the name wamer from now on.

Thursday, July 09, 2009

Normal Plushies and Etsy Stores

My wife, Nicole, has always been the crafty type. When we were dating (if you would call it that... we didn't actually go on that many dates) she would make candles, clothes, and wrapping paper out of candy wrappers. When we got married she continued on her crafty ways with making Christmas cards, knitting, and sewing pirate costumes. Now that we have a house she has found new hobbies to add to the list. Stained glass, very fancy Renaissance dresses, and making soft toys.

Recently though she has been working over time with the crafts, the reason is that she has made an Etsy store and people are actually buying the things that she is making. The name of the store is Nausicaa Distribution and it features things that are statistics (and math) related. So far the most popular item is the Normal Distribution Plushie.

She has been so successful with the store that she has made enough money to buy a new table to make stained glass on, and even buy her own domain NausicaaDistribution.com. Last night I sat down and fixed up her web page so that it looks all pretty, well, at least for Firefox users (my rigorous testing was of me making sure it looked fine on my browser).

If you have a minute go check her store out, the audience is kinda specific (those that like cute and statistical things), but maybe you will fall in love with math all over again.

Thursday, July 02, 2009

2 smart 4 knives. (or the padded path to doom)

Just a reminder about banning guns: if we ban guns we will just ban knives next (because criminals will just use them instead). And we aren't just talking about big knives but I also mean steak knives. It sounds stupid but England is showing us our society without guns:


"As knife crime remains a problem in many of our towns and cities, it beggars belief that so many traders are still prepared to sell potentially lethal weapons to children," said Ron Gainsford, chief executive of the Trading Standards Institute (TSI).

...

Knives have become a status symbol among some young people and the increase in searching by police officers means some young people dash into shops to buy knives for "instant arming".

article

Yeah.

How about we just hold our children accountable and make them responsible. It is the child that is babied his whole life that utterly fails when grown up, the same is true for societies.